Divination magic foiling your best laid plans


Dungeon Magazine General Discussion

Contributor

So how do some DMs out there deal with divination magic - especially at higher levels? Even 9th level characters can fiddle around with plots by using spells such as commune, commune with nature, and contact other plane.

Moving into the slightly higher levels, spells such as find the path and discern location have amazing plot-busting potential. Once you factor in non-core spells, it gets even worse. Mysteries are no longer quite so mysterious, and the characters will never misplace their car keys or have mis-matched socks ever again! :) (wow - that'd make a cool magic item in real life! Zherog's automatic car-key and missing sock finder! I'd be rich, I tell you! Rich! :D)

Do the folks around here who write the higher level adventures ever take divinations into account? It seems every time I come up with a plot for a high level adventure that's anything other than, "go here and kick some ass" I find my plot tumbling down once I consider the effects of divinations. Any advice?

Paizo Employee Creative Director

The best way to handle high level divination spells is to build adventures for them rather than against them. Which means that, at certain levels, some adventure plotlines (navigate the maze, find the murderer, and discover the hidden lost city) become meaningless. If you want to do one of these plots for higher level characters, it's best to set up the plot so that the only way they can uncover details is by using these divination spells.

High level play changes substantially, and not only becasue of divination spells. Transportation spells take away the "long overland journey" adventure. Resurrection spells take away the "someone killed the king" adventure. It's just the nature of the game.


My favorite foil for divination spells - "The future is not written in stone - actions have occurred that have altered the future which was revealed to you." Or some variation of that statement. What I have done is if "the veil of the future was parted" was to keep the general feel of the foretelling the same, but alter some of the details.

Oh, and try not to be too specific in anything that is revealed in the divination spell, unless the characters ask a specific question. If their question is wide open, the answer can be wide open.


Be very, very strict about the exact text of the spells. Scrying only lets you see within 10 ft of the target, not any farther, and if they succeed at a Will save or have some other means of detecting scrying they'll know something's up. Find the Path finds only very specific destinations. Discern Location is sympathetic magic and requires you to have something of the target's or to have encountered them once before. Commune gives only yes/no answers and has an XP cost. Contact Other Plane gives only one-word answers and has drawbacks. Detect Evil is not a license to kill in most law-abiding societies. Etc.


Who needs Divination spells to ruin a mystery or surprise?

Use the Divine spell Call Zelekhut (sp).

Casting time is 10 minutes, but you get to assign the Inevitable to perform one task for you for the wonderful price of 100XP (a drop in the bucket for virtually ANY character given the return on investment).

Hey Zelekhut....help us scout out this dungeon.

Broken.
...grumble...


I agree with Mssrs Jacobs and Underfoot. Be aware of precisely what divinations your party is capable of. Let them use commune to ask Pelor their nine questions, because if they've reached level 9 and are willing to spend 100XP, they've earned it.

In fact, to take a rule from video game design, you should at some points require the player to use his abilities to progress at all. Mario's ability to jump - a big innovation in his day - would have been a pointless gimmick if the levels were flat and he could punch enemies instead of jumping on their heads. Jedi Knight didn't give you a lightsaber for nothing - by allowing lightsabers to deflect most ranged weapons, they made your lightsaber compulsory for defeating other lightsaber-using opponents.

To get back to the point, you should plan your adventures to require the players to use the divinations at their disposal. Force the players to use find the path in order to find the dungeon at all. Have a person so difficult to find that only the 15th level player characters with discern location are able to find it. Plan your adventures such that you assume the players will use the divinations at their disposal, and they will feel proud that their abilities have enabled them to do something they otherwise could not.


I agree with the sentiments of these replies. The problem lies not with the divination magic itself, but the DM who is unprepared to deal with it.

Cheer
s
Llowellen


If your high level party is going up against high level opponents, those high level opponents are going to know that their enemies may have powerful divination magic at their disposal and would counter it with spells such as the private sanctum spell or non-detection, etc.

It's an arms race type thing....most high level or powerful intelligent creatures that have stuff to hide are going to take proactive steps to avoid being scryed or divined. I think for every divination spell there is or should be a counter-spell that negates the effect of that divination. If there wasn't there would never be any negotiation between kings, or secret plans hatched by an evil collaborative, because if they can't counter the divination magic, then there's no point.....


I always emphasize that dealing with gods, even when you're a 'good' cleric, is a traumatic thing. It only gets worse at higher levels when the power you are contacting feels 'closer.' Divination magic is the most susceptible to side effects because it does call, in a way, for intervention. In addition to the "design games for higher levels comment" by Jacobs, I suggest making the higher level divinations take their toll on the cleric either through exhaustion, or perhaps through the party's reaction to him (maybe he's fine but everyone around him is affected in some way by his good/evil radiance). When you deal with gods, even those characters who are "good" or "evil" can't always withstand super-divine "good" or "evil" effects. I never let my players get away with saying, "I'm evil so evil things can't affect me." So, make high level divination magic have alternate costs in addition to what others have suggested.


Divination magic is no different from any other spell, power or ability that requires a little planning or forethought. Even spells like message can ruin an adventure if you don't plan for it. Message could ruin the surprise in a level one adventure (I believe it was an example in the 3.0 DMG) where the halfling rogue goes into a crawlspace and gets paralyzed by the ghoul. If the wizard casts message on the rogue, he can ask, "What do you see?" leaving the "line open" for the rogue to respond as soon as he gets in trouble.

My players use message as a walkie-talkie. My high level players (the party ranges from level 10 to 17) cast message on everyone in the party and use the wizards like switchboards. When the wizard is flying invisibly in front of the party scouting, they are usually warned about most encounters before they happen. That's ok though, because they shouldn't usually be surprised if they take precautions. They still were surprised by the assassins with high hide skills. In fact, they had such a hard time dealing with being sniped by someone they couldn't see, that they popped their eversmoking canopic jar and hid in a Leomund's secure shelter spell for a week.

Most of the spells that have me thinking on my feet are utility spells. It's amazing what a smart caster can come up with. The one high-level divination spell I have dealt with recently though is commune. The party was trying to determine how to steal an artifact on display in the capital city of an Empire. Keep in mind these were mainly good chaarcters, but they were on a divine mission that required this artifact. The dwarven cleric says, "I'll commune with my god and find out how to steal the artifact."

My immediate response was, "Uh oh!" The quest had indirectly come from this same dwarven deity. So of course he would be helpful to the cause. However, the artifcat was in the possession of an allied good-aligned deity. I told the player he could ask his 10 questions, but as soon as he cast the spell, he had to ask each question as soon as I answered the previous. Basically, inflicting the duration of 1 round/level on the player. I also informed the rest of the players, that once the cleric started communing, they could not hear the questions or answers, and could not interject OOCly during the proceedings.

The players spent at least 30 minutes carefully constructing and wording their questions. During this time I practiced my best poker face. When the cleric was finally ready, he started asking his questions. Since the group was discussing them, I pretty much had my answers ready. He would ask, I would spit out an answer. Near the end of the questioning, he changed a couple of questions on the fly based on the answers I had given.

This approach allowed a couple of things to happen. First, the entire party got to participate in the construction of the questions. So instead of a half hour of me RPing with the cleric while everyone watched, the party worked as a group for half an hour. Second, the use of the spell was restricted by real-time playing. The cleric wasn't restricted in any way to asking the questions he had prepared, but if he wanted to change them, he had literally only a few seconds to reword them. Third, the discussion time allowed me the time to consider each question and come up with appropriately misleading answers. :-D

Ultimatley, the players used the information to perform a heist that seriously affected the alignment of their paladin and wizard by getting an innocent urchin vaporized by a disintegration field. They then tried to inquire about the urchin via the authorities and the paladin was arrested, only to be released after the being dertermined insane and innocent via a zone of truth spell. The party ended up having to enter and win a kite fighting contest to get an audience with the emperor in hopes of convincing him to give them the artifact.

Hope that helps,
Doug

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